Mouse or human?

Mouse, it's easy, CD11c for DCs and F4/80 for macrophages.

Human, they like to use CD68 for macrophages, and CD209 (I think) for DCs.

I don't work with any other species.

Sorry i forgot to mention I was talking about bovine monocyte derived dendritic cells and macrophages

DC do not express CD14 ( monocyte/macrophage marker) but have high levels of MHC molecules (HLA-ABC, DR, DQ, and DP), adhesins (CD54, CD58 and CDllc), and co-stimulatory molecules (CD40 and B7/CD80). The co-stimulatory molecules, CD80 and CD86, are up-regulated during DC activation.

To date, no single cell marker expressed exclusively on DC has been identified. Therefore a combination of the presence and absence of various cell markers can be used. DC can be identified using cell surface phenotyping by demonstrating a high level of MHC Class II or co-stimulatory molecule such as CD80 or CD86, and the absence of lineage markers, such as CD3 (T cell), CD14 (monocyte), CD19 (B cell), CD56 (NK cell) and CD66b (granulocyte).

In addition, bovine monocyte-derived macrophages significantly express CD163 (especially compared to freshly isolated monocytes).

These articles may be helpful:

Article Heterogeneity of Bovine Peripheral Blood Monocytes

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25387110

See also :

https://www.bio-rad-antibodies.com/static/2017/vet/expression-chart-for-bovine-biomarkers.pdf

Thank you Dominik for your reply.

Yes it is very difficult to identify these cells just based on one marker. I have had a look at diffrent markers on moDCs following stimulation with LPS and TNF-alpha and I am confident that my cells are actually moDCs. And also morphologically they looked like DCs and not macrophages. Just for the sake of not being asked too many questions during my viva I wanted to check that they were not macrophages.

Hi Amina,

In in vitro culture, we historically called cells that stuck down macrophages and cells that did not DCs. As you may already appreciate, we now also distinguish DCs and MoDCs, based on whether the cells have a pre-DC or monocyte origin, respectively. Whether a MoDC is a DC is debatable. Some people consider anything deriving from a monocyte to be a form of macrophage, and that DCs can only come from pre-DCs. Functionally, MoDCs do not migrate well (if at all) to lymph nodes via lymphatics, which is often considered a requisite property of DCs, but I think they are still pretty good at presenting antigen to naive T cells, at least in vitro.

In bone marrow cultures from mice, we now know that GM-CSF cultures comprise a mixture of monocyte-derived DCs and pre-DC-derived DCs (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26084029). Since your cultures came from blood (as opposed to bone marrow), I would predict that most of the cells are monocyte-derived. But whether they are macrophages or MoDCs is not such an easy question!

Good luck with your viva!